Variables effecting conformity - ASCH 1956

AO1 - key study - Asch 1956

Aim

• whether the ‘real’ participants would stick to what they believed to be right, or cave in to the pressure of the majority and go along with its decison

particpants

5 confederate and 1 actual participant

procedure

123 male US undergraduates were tested. Particpants were seated around a table and asked to look at 3 lines of different lengths - took turns to call out - real participant always second to last - 12 of 18 trials confederates were instructed to give the incorrect answer

findings

on the trials average conformity rate was 33%

participants greed with the incorrect response given by other group members, on average, 1/3 of the trials. Asch also discovered individual differences in conformity rates

¼ of the particpants never conformed on any of the critical trials, half conformed on 6 or more of the critical trials and 1/20 conformed on all 12 of the critical trials

when he interviewed participants after they admitted to show compliance but believe their own perceptions and judgements but changed public behaviour to avoid disapproval

Variables affecting conformity AO1 - group size

very little conformity when majority consisted of just one or two confederates, however majority of 3 confederates, conform rates jumped to about 30%

further increase in size of majority did not increased this level of conformity substantially so size of majority important but to a point.

Difficulty of task

Asch made differences in the line lengths much smaller so less obvious and task much more difficult

Under these circumstances, the level of conformity increased. Lucas et al (2006) investigated this relationship a little further. They found that the influence of task difficulty is moderated by the self efficacy of the individual. When exposed to math problems in Asch type tasks, high self efficacy participants (confident in their own abilities) remained more independent than low self efficacy participants, even under conditions of high task difficulty. This shows that situational differences (task difficulty) and individual differences (self efficacy) are both important in determining conformity.

unanimity of group

when real participant was given support conformity levels dropped significantly from 33% to 5.5%

in condition where confederate gave an answer different from the correct and the rest of the group, conformity rates dropped to 9% - close to original rate fall

led Asch to believe that breaking groups unanimous position was that the major factor in conformity reduction

AO3 -research may be a ‘child of its time’

It is possible that aschs findings are unique because the research took place in a particular period of US history when conformity was more important.

in 1956, the US was in the grip of McCarthyism, a strong anti-communist period when people were scared to go against the majority and so more likely to conform. Some years later, Perrin and Spencer attempted to repeat Asch’s study in the UK.

In their initial study they obtained only one conforming response out of a total of 396 trials where a majority unanimously gave the same wrong answer

however in subsequent study, where they used youths on probation as participants and probation officers as the confederates, they found similar levels of conformity to those found by Asch back in the 1950s

this confirmed that conformity is more likely if the perceived costs of not conforming are high, which would have been the case during the McCarthy era in the US - this shows that this research lacks temporal validity

AO3 - group size - problem with determining the effect of group size

Bond 2005 suggests a limitation of research in conformity is that studies have used only a limited range of majority sizes

Asch had conducted that a majority size of three was a sufficient number for maximal influence and therefore most subsequent studies using the Asch procedure have used 3 as the majority size.

Bond points out that no studies other than Asch have used a majority size greater than 9, and in other studies of conformity the range of majority sized used is much narrower, typically between 2 and 4

this, suggests bond, means we know very little about the effect of larger majority sizes on conformity levels.

AO3 - validity of Asch’s original study - questioning of unconvincing confederates?

• a problem for the confederates in Asch’s study is that it would have been difficult for them to act convincingly when giving the wrong answer, something that would pose serious problems for the validity of the study

• Mori and Arai 2010 overcame the confederate problem by using a technique where particpants’s wore glasses with special polarising filters

• 3 participants’s in each group worse identical glasses and a fourth wore a different set with a different filter.

• this meant each participant viewed the same stimuli but one participant saw them differently, causing hem to judge that a different comparison line matched the standard line

• for female participants (not male), the results closely matched those of the original Asch study.

• this suggests that the confederates in the original study had acted convincingly, reinforcing the findings of Aschs study.